Kevin Durant

The Warriors are still heavy title favorites in Vegas despite Kevin Durant injury

Published Mar. 1, 2017 7:19 p.m. ET

Andrew Lynch

Despite Kevin Durant's scary knee injury on Tuesday night, the Golden State Warriors have no reason to panic.

That's according to Las Vegas, anyway, as both brick-and-mortar and online sportsbooks barely adjusted the Warriors' 2017 championship odds following an optimistic diagnosis on Wednesday.

Prior to Durant's Grade 2 MCL sprain and bone bruise, Golden State was going off as a -150 favorite to win the title at the Las Vegas Westgate Superbook. And as of Wednesday afternoon, the Warriors' championship odds at the Superbook remained at -150 (via OddsShark.com). The Cavaliers currently have the second-best odds at +300.

Warriors fans can take solace, then, in the fact that the people who make money predicting sports think Golden State will be just fine. Although some online books did move their number slightly from -180 to either -150 or -140, even that's a minimal adjustment following such a high-profile injury.

As for the rest of the regular season? You might be able to find some betting value in this injury. The Warriors are just 28-30-2 against the spread this year, and Durant's impact on the score is probably overstated in the public eye. As OddsShark's Jon Campbell points out:

If you throw in a point for public perception, we are only looking at an impact of 2 to 3 points to the spread without KD for Warriors games early on and I think it will be more like a point or two after a couple of games. I belive that means we’ll see some value in Golden State coming up.